Tag: magazine

Why would you give away content for free, in order to make money? Sounds crazy, but that’s how the smartest publishers we know have grown at an exponential speed.
Selling magazine subscriptions is part of a four-step process that begins with giving away free content.
By giving away free content, like downloadable reports, you can build new relationships

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At Mequoda, we have the privilege of marketing more than 200 premium subscription products including magazines, newsletters, and memberships that spark a myriad of ideas on how to create value.

Whenever we work with a new client, there are four words they become familiar with very quickly.

In this week’s strategy spotlight with Don Nicholas, Chairman & CEO of Mequoda, explains how these four words will change how you approach your business, and how you can learn more about them when you download our new FREE report, How to Increase Audience, Revenue and Profits with Multiplatform Publishing.

In the summer of 2014, we launched what we believe to be the first-ever web magazine, I like Crochet. I Like Crochet was Prime Publishing’s first foray into premium content, aimed at readers looking for a higher level of access to unique and exclusive patterns and advice. The web magazine provided this access through fully

“Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving,” said David Ogilvy, known as “The Father of Advertising” the “Original Mad Man”.

Even our best performing clients—who publish on multiple platforms, run several subscription websites, and have helped define our pricing best practices—will see a drop in subscription sales when they stop testing. I told this to a client recently who went from having some of the highest conversion rates of our clients to having our worst performing rates, and we believe the culprit is a lack of subscription offer testing with new offers, like a 30-day free trial.

Whenever we work with a new client, there are four words they become familiar with very quickly.

In this week’s strategy spotlight with Don Nicholas, Chairman & CEO of Mequoda, explains how these four words will change how you approach your business, and how you can learn more about them when you download our new FREE report, How to Increase Audience, Revenue and Profits with Multiplatform Publishing.

Multiplatform publishers are always looking for new ways to increase online revenues and profits. If you’re currently seeking new platforms and opportunities, consider these three ancillary media platforms for generating consistent additional income:

Web magazine consumers like to read their magazines like they read their news – online.
Users are becoming more accustomed to viewing magazine content in the form of web magazines. Web editions can be displayed on any mobile or desktop device, so users are as familiar with the interface as they are with a web browser,

I was speaking with a colleague the other day who had crossed over from the magazine industry to newspaper publishing and back, about consumer marketing trends. We noted that it will be interesting to see how lessons learned from the newspaper industry move into the magazine industry over time. Daily newspapers are both financially larger

You may be sitting on three significant hidden assets that you can use to build your email marketing lists quickly
Do you realize that you might be sitting on a few opportunities to increase your email marketing lists? In the investments world, hidden assets are considered those that don’t show up on a balance sheet. Real

“You live and die by your ability to prioritize. You must focus on the most important, mission-critical tasks each day and night, and then share, delegate, delay or skip the rest.” Those are the wise words of Jessica Jackley, co-founder of the successful micro-loan startup, Kiva. And Eli Broad, 185th wealthiest person in the world, and the only person we know of who has built two Fortune 500 companies in two different industries confirms prioritizing and delegating simply isn’t done enough. “The inability to delegate is one of the biggest problems I see with managers at all levels,” says Broad.

We’re seeing new developments from some multiplatform publishing giants, including Hearst and The Wall Street Journal, that involve a focus on content and digital experience.

Only five years after the advent of the tablet, strategies for successful digital magazine publishing are starting to sort themselves out and deliver measurable results. Of course at Mequoda, we’re all about documenting these things so digital publishers don’t have to re-invent the wheel.

Here are 10 things you must do if you want to join the ranks of millionaire publishers … a goal we think is worthy of all digital publishers today.

This week we’re focusing on engagement, in How Can Engagement (E) Be Improved? The ‘E’ in the Mequoda Method’s ACEM, is really about retention, and the idea that if you’re a subscription-based publisher, that the link with relationship with your customer is key.

If you’re a publisher who maintains multiple websites, making the correct choice of a subscription management system is one of the most important decisions you’ll make, because doing it over and over again cuts into your profits and resources. We’ve watched numerous multi-website publishers trap themselves into a path that was too expensive to upgrade easily and efficiently because of the way they expanded the system in a nonstandard manner.

How a new California automatic renewal law affects all subscription businesses with customers in the golden state, and how to prepare for Vermont’s double opt-in requirement.
A new California automatic renewal law—that went into effect 7/1/18—requires online sellers, doing business in California, to allow online cancellation of auto-renewing memberships, subscriptions, or any recurring purchases that were initiated online.
This

A couple of years ago, Don outlined the attributes of a premium content subscription: not a website itself, but the thing that customers buy – the content subscription.

In updating this post (as we often do with our website content – a Mequoda best practice), we decided to give you an actual example of the perfect premium content subscription, and we settled on CooksIllustrated.com, the companion website to Cook’s Illustrated magazine from America’s Test Kitchen.

Deconstructing the phrase “premium content subscription” is a helpful exercise for getting this discussion onto the right track. Let’s take a look at each of the three words individually.

Publishers everywhere are seeing improved subscription revenue, and surely you want to see the same results. In order to put subscription revenue first, you should know the three reasons why we think this influx is happening:

First, we all should be thanking Amazon, Netflix and other large online businesses who have trained customers to believe that

We aim to be one of the best sources for magazine trends online, but we do it with a whole lot of help from our brothers and sisters in the industry.

Below we’ve compiled a list of the best portals, the best influencers, and the best reports on magazine trends available online. If you have more to add, please share your favorites with us in the comments.

Digital magazine publishers stay competitive and relevant to their audiences by presenting the best experiences possible. We watch constantly as experiments are made in the digital publishing industry to reach and connect with audiences. Today we’re reporting on the latest attempts at providing better user experiences.

Digital magazine publishing software is important; which option are you using?

Publishers have been trying digital magazine publishing software during the last few years in hopes of creating the best digital products for their audiences. And like everything else in digital magazine land, digital magazine software has evolved at light speed since we made our initial recommendations in January.

Here’s our latest (opinionated) look at the magazine software landscape.

Mequoda ran its first ever digital magazine consumer study in 2014, polling US adults with Internet access. At the time, the biggest finding was that 20% of respondents reported currently reading or subscribing to digital magazines on their tablets. Back then, 20% was a huge number.

In 2015, we conducted another study with triple the sample size

If you could, you’d hire a professional email subject line writer. You would, because you depend on your email list to sell magazine subscriptions or ads to advertisers, so smashing together 50-100 characters on the fly every day is a stinky approach to accomplishing those goals.

In 2017, all major publishers and most independents have a website portal. What 95% don’t have is a web magazine. But those who do are flourishing.

In today’s Strategy Spotlight, Don Nicholas, Chairman & CEO of Mequoda explains why he thinks the web edition is the best edition.

When you think of the top magazine companies, you probably imagine Time, Cosmopolitan, or Better Homes & Gardens. If you publish a magazine, try to instead think of the magazine media companies in your niche. Comparing a niche magazine to a general-interest publication will leave you empty-handed in the idea department.

Another major multiplatform publisher is in the process of making moves to unload some of its magazine titles. Today we look at Condé Nast, the company’s move to sell popular magazines, and its strategy going forward.

Once upon a time, online advertising had a shady reputation.

Luckily for publishers, that’s all in the past. The online advertising industry has improved its reputation, and consumers have become more accustomed to seeing these ads. Even the once-dreaded popup ad has become routine, especially when it’s carefully aligned with your content, which is a Mequoda Best Practice.

ACEM doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but if you’ve been following along for awhile, you know this acronym is baked into everything we do here at Mequoda.

Your website is made up of a variety of parts. To accomplish the goals of increasing your audience, revenues, and profits, all of those parts need to talk to one another. The nucleus of this system is your CMS, or content management system.

This is not unlike any team, where you have specialists and a project

When choosing CMS development services for your organization, consider how much retrofitting will be involved to get your subscription website running and how much familiarity you have with third-party fulfillment systems.
Periodical publishers and other subscription-based organizations do not run the same kind of business as most others do on the web, so why do so many

Premium newsletters and advisory services represent the pinnacle of subscription marketing, often commanding annual membership or subscription fees that are much higher than magazines.

Online magazine design has taken a number of steps forward in recent years, starting with the launch of the first-ever web magazine in 2014 called I Like Crochet. An online magazine, also known as a web magazine, is a premium publication that is read through a magazine subscription website. In our definition, it is not the same as the homepage of a magazine, where content is freely distributed, unless that content is metered by a paywall.

We often see publishers move forward with a variety of media acquisitions in order to target a specific market or fill in parts of their business that they deemed as lacking. Today we are looking at news of some recent publishing and media company moves.

As you know, having an online portal for your information is essential for growth. Using the web to publish and distribute content and not just serve as an extension of your brand is critical. But this is a new beast, and to be prepared, you must plan. This holds true even if your business has survived the last 50 to 100 years.

In the last three to five years we stumbled upon a process we now call blockbuster management. Our blockbuster management program acknowledges that any given website over time might have thousands of posts, but the remarkable thing is a relatively small number will ultimately be capable of driving 80% of the traffic.

In the words of David Ogilvy, “a good advertisement is one that sells the product without drawing attention to itself.” When selling a web magazine, one of the best ways to do so is by giving away enough content that it sells itself, but not so much that visitors don’t convert into subscribers.

The most significant

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Do you think a 24/7 online encyclopedia of information is a product people might subscribe to? Would they be willing to pay more for a subscription to your magazine if it included access to all your archived content? The latter is usually the reason why publishers decide to create a digital archive of their back issues,

In his bestseller, “Outliers,” Malcolm Gladwell stated that it takes 10,000 hours, or approximately ten years, so become an expert at something. That means there are very few digital product development experts out there in the universe, even in the publishing world. Let’s consider some of the digital products we interface with regularly today.

Content publishers with the most success meet their audiences where they want to be met, and do it through the most-opportune channels. Today we are looking at some ways additional revenue opportunities develop for publishers in a time when digital media is growing.

ACEM doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but if you’ve been following along for awhile, you know this acronym is baked into everything we do here at Mequoda.

In his book, Free: The Future of Radical Price, Chris Anderson wrote, “People often don’t care as much about things they don’t pay for, and as a result they don’t think as much about how they consume them. Free can encourage gluttony, hoarding, thoughtless consumption, waste, guilt, and greed. We take stuff because it’s there,

These subscription business model facts will help you take a new look at your current approach to subscription marketing.
Most of the subscription business model facts you usually hear likely pertain to percentages and numbers that don’t apply to you and instead reflect someone else’s business. But the ten facts below give you permission to take a step

Coming up with the right subscription website business model(s) is usually the biggest stumbling block for those wanting to get into this business.

Choosing your content focus is a business-critical decision, as the focus you choose pretty much dictates your chances of success with a subscription website. However, more serious than the focus on content for

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I Like Crochet has improved upon their already best-practice web magazine with collections, clubs, and previews.
It’s genuinely thrilling to be in the publishing industry at this moment and time. Think about how one of the defining factors of millennials is that they have been alive to experience life with and without immediate access to the

Digital magazine publishers are putting more emphasis on digital audience growth, and doing it through a variety of methods including internal content, acquisitions, and third-party content partners.

Knowing how to start an online magazine requires first understanding the differences between an online magazine and the dozens of other publishing models available to you in the 21st century.

These differences range from the obvious – a comparison with print products, for instance, is pretty straightforward – to the more nuanced: say, discerning an online magazine from a digital magazine. What could possibly separate the two other than terminology?!

You hear us talk about the Mequoda Method, and how we’ve developed it by watching the world’s most successful publishers transition from print to the digital world, but there’s so much more to it. Watch our webcast hosted by myself and our team, called What is the Mequoda Method? to find out.